Yesterday, Andrew Owen posted an update on the Ultima Dragons Facebook group to let us all know where things stand with his project, U3.5: Pax Britannia:

As you may or may not have gathered, last year was personally eventful for me. Became a dad. Clocked up another decade. Did a road trip from England to Italy and back that I’d been planning for a few years. Left my writing job in enterprise Web security for a writing job in video games development. There were some low points too but those are quickly disappearing in the rear view mirror. Suffice to say, I’ve got my mojo back. And I’m pleased to say I’ve found a semi-automated way of converting the music arrangements for U3.5 from GarageBand to the tracker format used by the ZXodus][Engine. Hopefully pretty soon I’ll be able to post the complete 3 channel PSG sound track to SoundCloud. The Spectrum +2B has an AY sound chip so it should sound like an Apple ][ mockingboard.

He sent me one of the converted tracks, the theme for the game. It is pretty impressive, the sound he has managed to achieve; my memory of the Mockingboard is a bit dim, but Andrew’s major-key arrangement of classic Ultima music will certainly scratch that MIDI itch but good.